No Name Trilogy, Book I: No Name

Chapter 32 - Amirah

My eyes blinked open. Momentarily, I thought I was still in the nighttime room of the cabin, with Henry, but I quickly realized that this was daylight, not lamplight, and I felt before I saw that Henry was long gone. The dull ache, the uncomfortable void in my chest--he was farther away than I could know, and a deep misery filled me. I was lying on the floor and tried to rise, but I quickly found that I wasn't going to be able to; Jason was lying across my legs--

Jason! He'd been shot!

I struggled to pull my legs out from under him, then rolled him over. He groaned in pain, and that restored my hope. Crouching over him, pushing aside my own lightheadedness, I looked at the front of him, and I caught sight of a dark spot of dried blood along his left side. My legs were bloodied from his wound as well, and I wondered if the pressure of his heavy body being pressed against me had stopped the bleeding enough to save him.

Jason's eyes opened, and I recognized real suffering in their depths, so I was surprised when he asked me whether I was all right.

I gave him only a perplexed stare.

"The whole side of your face . . . there's blood," he told me.

No wonder I was feeling dizzy. It was my temple, still. I wondered briefly whether there'd been some sort of anticoagulant, something to keep the wound from closing up too quickly, in whatever they'd put in my brain. It struck me that I'd just lived through one long, entire, solid memory—the memory of that night and what'd happened after it. I'd recalled every detail, and it was still fresh in my mind, unlike a fading dream. I knew it would be there for as long as my mind was left to itself, now.

"Are you all right?" I asked Jason, my throat sore for reasons unbeknownst to me.

"Oh yeah, sure," he grumbled tortuously. "I've only been shot . . . my entire torso is on fire."

Despite the grave situation, I knew he'd be all right. His sarcasm was proof enough. And I thought, hopefully, that maybe the bullet had grazed his side, maybe not actually entered his body. But we needed help. I had to let go of my aversion to people and police and get him medical attention. "You're going to have to stay here while I look for help."

"Help?" He sounded skeptical, but he slowly, painstakingly attempted to prop himself up on a pillow I placed on the ground, and I stood up cautiously, supporting myself against whatever was nearby when lightheadedness threatened.

"Don't move--I don't want you to bleed anymore. There's got to be a phone somewhere."

"Like I could move," Jason managed.

When the vertigo cleared from my eyes, I went to the kitchen and tried to locate a landline or some means of communicating with the outside world, but then I realized how unlikely it was I'd find any. The Circuit wouldn't want anyone to be able to find this place; of course they wouldn't connect a phone. But what could I do? Jason was in no shape to walk again, and I wasn't sure I could do anything to help his wound. Nevertheless, I began to search the house for first aid items, calling to Jason and eliciting a response every so often to make sure he was all right, and in the midst of that search, I found myself in one of the rooms off the landing. Pausing, I recognized an eerie sensation that this was where they'd brought me--in my memory--where they'd opened up the floor and taken me to some room below. But as I contemplated trying to find the hidden trap door, wondering whether, even if I did find it, I'd be able to descend and face whatever was down there, a terrible sound reached my ears. I was sure--and yet it couldn't be--that it was the whirring of a fan blade! Nearer, nearer it came . . . that continuous whooshing, until it was so loud I was sure the floor would cave in and I'd fall--I clapped my hands to my ears, felt the dizziness returning--